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You Are Surrounded by an Invisible Cloud Everywhere You Go, And Scientists Finally Measured What's in It

If you ever feel truly, utterly alone, take heart: an
invisible entourage never leaves your side.

This hidden, ever-present swarm is called the
exposome, and while scientists have only just begun to figure out what
populates this constant cloud of chemicals, bugs, and whatnot swirling around
you, new research offers an unprecedented glimpse inside.

"People have measured things like air pollution
on a broad scale, but no one has really measured biological and chemical
exposures at a personal level," says geneticist Michael Snyder from
Stanford University.

"No one really knows how vast the human exposome
is or what kinds of things are in there."

To find out, Snyder and his team re-engineered a
small air-monitoring device, about the size of a pack of playing cards. Over
the course of two years, 15 volunteers wore these units strapped to their arm,
as it sucked in small puffs of air from their personal orbit and the
environment around them.

Every little thing inhaled by the device – bacteria,
viruses, chemicals, fungi, and all manner of other particulates – was then
extracted for DNA and RNA sequencing and chemically profiled, then catalogued
in a custom-built database.

Some participants wore the monitor for a week, others
for a month.

Snyder himself strapped one on for a whole two years,
and in the end the team had amassed a staggering amount of data on exposome
inhabitants – approximately 70 billion readouts.

"Scientists had assembled separate bacteria,
viral or fungi databases, but to fully decode our environmental exposures, we
built a pan-domain database to cover more than 40,000 species," says one
of the team, Chao Jiang.

Participants in the study spent their time across
about 50 different locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, but even when they
inhabited the same environment, their personal exposome signatures were largely
individual.

"It turns out, even at very close distances, we
have very different exposure profiles or 'signatures,'" Snyder says.

"The bottom line is that we all have our own
microbiome cloud that we're schlepping around and spewing out."

What makes up each person's crowd is of course
variable then, but includes numerous traces of their own microbial cloud, plus
things like fungi, and particles that have floated in from their immediate
environment – such as household pets, chemicals, plants, and so on.

The researchers acknowledge this is only the
beginning of this kind of research. In their study, only three individuals wore
the device extensively, so there's a limit to how much we can rely upon their
results so far.

But already the amount of exposome data gleaned from
this technique shows there's a huge amount we can theoretically learn from
studying our circulating swarms – and the researchers say if the technology can
be made more accessible, it could be an important health and diagnostic tool.

"We want to measure more people in more diverse
environments," Snyder says.

"We also want to simplify the technology,
ideally to the point that everyone can be out there measuring their own
personal exposures – perhaps something like an exposome-detecting
smartwatch."

It's early days, but it looks like we could be on the
precipice of a transformative new era in health – one that doesn't just peer
into your body's internals, but also investigates its immediate external scene:
your thriving personal cloud.

"For years we've been sequencing people's
genomes, testing their blood and urine, and analysing the microbes in their
guts to understand how these things impact human health," Snyder told
Wired.

"But all of those things have to do with what's
inside your body. The one big thing we're missing is: What are you exposed
to?"

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